Most of what the accounts remember about The Crown is work and weather: the scrubbing, the well, the cold grates, the smoke. But every so often the memories break into celebration, and they tend to do it around the same few occasions.
The earliest is a Christmas one. Alice Miller, who grew up in the pub in the early years of the twentieth century, wrote with nostalgia about the handbell ringers who performed in the tap room just before Christmas. She was proud that her family, and her grandparents before her parents, had kept The Crown, and the handbell ringers were among the memories she chose to set down.
Sonny Rose, landlord from 1943 for sixteen years, made a habit of it. He was a former Coldstream Guard and a veteran of the First World War, and by Wenham’s account he frequently provided special events for his customers. The pipers were invited to perform. So was the RAF band from Halton camp.
The best-dated of all the celebrations is from August 1945. When the war in the Far East ended, Sonny took the darts team to a pub in London to celebrate VJ Day. The Crown was usually crowded in the evenings and was a focus of village life, and Sonny, by Wenham’s account, was a popular but firm landlord who enjoyed high esteem in the village. So the darts team went up to London together, on a day the whole country was celebrating.
“The fox hunters with the beagles often set off from The Crown suitably fortified by a glass of sherry.”
Peter Wenham, Glimpses of Cuddington’s Past
The everyday ones are smaller. The fox hunters, out with the beagles, would often set off from The Crown, suitably fortified by a glass of sherry. And parcels carried by the Oxford Bus Company were left at the pub for collection by, or delivery to, villagers, which made the pub the place villagers went to pick up, or to leave, their parcels.
None of it was grand. It was a pub doing what a village pub does: giving the ordinary calendar somewhere to happen. A handbell peal before Christmas, a band on a summer evening, a team sent off to London on the day the war ended.
Sources
Alice Miller, The Village of Cuddington of a Bygone Age, 1991, as summarised in “A Village Childhood: Alice in Cuddington”, Cuddington Historical Society.
Peter Wenham, Glimpses of Cuddington’s Past, with recollections of Lil Arnott.
Drawn from accounts by Peter Wenham and the Cuddington Historical Society, rearranged and reworded for this page. Short quotations from Peter Wenham are marked as his. One racial nickname used of a villager has been left out.